With rapid expansion of Machine to Machine (M2M for short) communications applications, market demands and scales of the M2M communications applications have met explosive growth in recent years.
In a conventional M2M system, when multiple control channels exist, a network side device determines in advance a control channel on which user equipment (UE for short) is located, and sends control information to the UE over the control channel on which the UE is located. When a total quantity of UEs on the control channel on which the UE is located reaches a preset upper limit, the network side device may send, to the UE, a notification message for changing the control channel, so as to instruct the UE to switch from the control channel on which the UE is currently located to another control channel, and then send control information to the UE over the control channel to which the UE changes.
However, for the UE, a channel condition of a control channel on which the UE is actually located is not considered during a manner in which the network side device sends, to the UE by determining the total quantity of UEs on the control channel on which the UE is located, the notification message for changing the control channel. Therefore, such a control information sending manner is inefficient.